In the past across most industries and sectors, remote workers were the exception (and we’d all hear them brag at parties about their glorious office-less job). However, these days remote working isn’t just trending, but it’s the norm!

3 Out of 4 Workers Will Be Mobile by 2020

According to research from IDC, the number of mobile workers in the U.S. will grow to a staggering 105.4 million by 2020, at which time approximately 3 out of every 4 employees will work at least part — if not all — of the time away from the office.

Given the surge in remote working, it’s easy to understand why businesses of all sizes — from small startups to large enterprises — are investing in systems and solutions that boost mobile productivity. And one of the ways that they’re achieving this mission critical objective is by switching to an advanced hosted VoIP phone system.

Below, we highlight the 5 ways that a hosted VoIP phone system significantly and sustainably boosts mobile productivity, which is as good for remote workers and GREAT for an organization’s competitive advantage, customer experience commitment, and overall bottom-line:

1. Anytime, Anywhere Connectivity

Simply by installing a lightweight app on their smartphone (iPhone or Android), remote workers can access the hosted VoIP system to make or receive calls from anywhere, and at any time (see note below). What’s more, they can instantly connect with through instant messages, and check the status of their colleagues before making or transferring a call.

Note: we mentioned that remote workers can make and receive calls at anytime. However, if desired, system administrators can create customized rules that govern when this is possible, such as during regular business hours. It’s also possible to set geographic restrictions to prevent calls if they are made or received beyond a certain distance from the office.

2. One Number vs. Multiple Numbers

Remote workers typically have multiple phones — which means they have several phone numbers. For example, they often have an office number, a corporately-owned smartphone number, a personal smartphone number, and a home landline number (and possibly a separate home office number as well). Trying to reach remote workers can be like a time consuming process of trial and error!

However, a hosted VoIP phone system eliminates this hassle and confusion. Remote workers can route all calls to their smartphone (or any other number if desired), which means that colleagues and customers only have to remember and dial one number vs. multiple numbers.

3. Consistent Caller ID Profile

Despite the productivity advantages, many businesses don’t want their remote workers making outgoing calls from their smartphone because their personal name/number will show up on the other parties’ Caller ID. In some cases, this can simply look amateur and unprofessional, while in other cases the concern may be about worker safety and security.

Fortunately, neither of these are risks or issues with a hosted VoIP phone system. All outgoing calls only display the business’s name and phone number on Caller ID.

4. Seamlessly Transfer Live Calls

With a hosted VoIP phone system, remote workers can seamlessly transfer live calls from their smartphone to any other IP phone that is connected to the system — including those that are installed in other locations — and continue to call without interruption.

For example, they can answer a call using the IP phone on their desk, transfer it to their smartphone as they walk out of the office to their car, and then transfer it again to their car via Bluetooth.

5. Full Call Control

With a hosted VoIP phone system, mobile workers can manage their contacts, voicemails, call history, answering rules, greetings, presence, and all other configurations from a single location. They can also pick-up voicemail-to-email and voicemail-to-text messages throughout the day (or night if required!).

The Bottom Line

These days, the question isn’t whether businesses need a mobile telecommunications strategy and solution, but how quickly and affordably they can put one in place. At DigitalPhone.io, we make it happen for as little as $20 per user, with unlimited advanced calling features and full mobile integration to empower today and tomorrow’s remote workforce.

To learn more about the benefits of a hosted VoIP phone system for your multi-site organization, contact the DigitalPhone.io team at (336) 560-4400 today, or click the Contact Button on your right. Your consultation with us is free.

DigitalPhone.io, a leading hosted telecommunications firm that serves customers across the U.S., has launched a new video that highlights the key benefits of their hosted VoIP phone system for educational organizations and government agencies.

The new video, which is available for on-demand viewing at https://digitalphone.io/education-and-government, explains that unlike conventional phone systems that are costly to purchase and maintain, offer limited features and functions, and are inflexible when it comes to making changes or scaling, a VoIP hosted phone system from DigitalPhone.io:

Requires minimal up-front capital expense costs

Delivers substantial year-to-year cost savings

Is flexible, customizable, scalable, and easy to change

Supports both an in-house and remote workforce

Is secured through several integrated strategies

Provides advanced carrier-class features

Uses multiple technologies to ensure business continuity

Is simple and easy to administer and monitor through a web-based portal

Is backed 24/7/365 by best-of-class technical and end user support

“Today’s government organizations and education institutions need a telecommunication system that is innovative, feature-rich, scalable, efficient, easy-to-use and secure,” commented DigitalPhone.io’s CEO Nicky Smith. “That’s why they’re choosing a VoIP hosted phone system from DigitalPhone.io — and reaping significant and measurable rewards from day one.”

Added Smith, whose company is a leading provider of USAC Category 1 eligible hosted telecommunications to K-12 schools in the Southeast U.S.: “We also know that just like their counterparts in the private sector, some end users in educational organizations and government agencies are less excited than others about adopting new technology. That’s why our training team makes the learning curve gentle, easy and fun. Within minutes, people who were reluctant to use the system enthusiastically embrace it, and wonder how they ever managed without it!”

About DigitalPhone.io
DigitalPhone.io (formerly Carolina Digital) is a pioneer of hosted phone services, and provides products that improve the capabilities of business and education telephony, while reducing their overall cost. The company’s offerings stand out for their excellent value, including very competitive pricing, the industry’s deepest feature set, ease of deployment, and many user-friendly packages – from a full turnkey set-up including dial tone and VoIP phones, to automated call answering and routing solutions that work with existing land lines, cell phones or VoIP phones. Learn more at https://digitalphone.io.

If your business has two or more locations — regardless of whether you’re in the B2B, B2C, B2B2C or B2G space — then the smartest thing you can do to your conventional landline phone system is get rid of it ASAP, and switch to a feature-rich cloud-based hosted VoIP solution.

Here are the 10 key reasons why hosted VoIP is a MUST for multi-site business, and should be at the top of your strategic to-do list if your goal is to dramatically reduce costs, improve communication, enhance customer experience, and ultimately boost the bottom line in both the short and long-term:

Instead of working in separate silos, all employees across the business are connected on a single, centralized platform. They can efficiently collaborate and communicate as if they were working in the same office, even if they’re located in separate cities, states or even countries.

All location-to-location calling is free. There are no long distance costs, and video calling can dramatically lower — or in some cases eliminate — travel expenses.

Businesses can implement a system-wide unified dialing plan, which instructs the call processing agent on how to consistently and correctly route calls.

When adding new lines to another (or new) location, there is no need to physically connect an on-premises PBX phone system to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) using copper wire. Businesses simply plug in their IP phones, connect them to the hosted VoIP phone system (which takes seconds), and they’re up and running.

End users can pick up phone calls from any location. This is extremely valuable for technicians, sales reps, and other “road warriors” who spend more time away from their desk than they do at it!

Managers can easily and quickly configure ring groups and hunt groups across multiple locations, to significantly reduce the likelihood that customers will go to voicemail or be placed on hold. Ring groups are when multiple phones ring at the same time. Hunt groups are when specific phones ring in successive order (e.g. phone #1 rings twice, then phone #2 rings twice, then phone #3 rings twice, and so on).

Regardless of where they are working, end users can either have their own specific number and/or extension, or if it’s beneficial to do so (such as in call center environments), end users can share a number.

Transferring calls from one location to another is rapid and seamless, and incoming callers do not detect any handshake gaps. It’s as if someone literally handed their phone to a colleague who resumes the conversation — even if that colleague is on the other side of the world!

Businesses can setup auto-attendants and call distribution groups to guide customers to the right location, without telling them to call another number.

All end users can take advantage of advanced carrier-class features such as voicemail-to-email, and access the system from their smartphone via a lightweight app (and when they make outgoing calls, the organization’s name/number shows up on caller ID — not their personal name/number).

To learn more about the benefits of a hosted VoIP phone system for your multi-site business, contact the DigitalPhone.io team at (336) 560-4400 today. Your consultation with us is free.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of businesses — from small firms to large enterprises — have upgraded from a costly and limited on-premises PBX phone system (a.k.a. landline system), to an advanced, feature rich and future-proof virtual PBX system (a.k.a. hosted VoIP system).

If your organization is eager to join the ranks of your counterparts — and indeed, your competitors — who are reaping the rewards of a virtual PBX system, then you may be holding off until after a scheduled office move is complete. Here are three reasons why the delay is unnecessary, and even counter-productive:

1. Moving the system doesn’t cost a cent.

Moving an on-premises PBX phone system is time consuming, complex and must be done by telecommunications specialists vs. traditional moving companies— which means that there’s a hefty price tag involved. But moving a virtual PBX phone system doesn’t cost a cent. All that needs to be packed, moved and unpacked are IP phones.

2. The system will remain operational

Moving an on-premises PBX phone system means taking it offline. And if a technical problem or issue arises — and this is often the case — the downtime can stretch into days.

However, a virtual PBX phone system eliminates this risk, simply because the system is not located on the premises the begin with: it’s housed with the VoIP Solutions Provider. As such, it never goes offline, and there is no downtown or disruption to either staff or customers. Calls can easily be made/received via smartphone during the move, or temporarily forwarded to other locations and/or phones (including landlines in home offices).

3. Re-Installing IP Phones takes seconds

Re-installing IP phones in your new location is remarkably fast and simple: all that you need to do is plug them in. They will automatically initialize and start working as reliably as they did before the move. What’s more, all of your system configurations — such as customized greetings, call forwarding rules, voicemail boxes, security settings, ring settings, and more — will remain intact.

To learn more about the benefits of switching to a virtual PBX phone system in the near future — so you can reap the rewards before, during and after your move — contact the DigitalPhone.io team at (336) 560-4400 today. Your consultation with us is free.

OpenPoll will disrupt the polling and market research industries by leveraging the advent of blockchain and cryptocurrency, offering more accurate polls, representing more individuals, and providing better political and business insight. OpenPoll works by allowing researchers—including politicians and corporations—to conduct polls and surveys through the international OpenPoll network. On the consumer end, individuals are able to complete detailed surveys quickly and anonymously through a mobile app and are paid for their responses. OpenPoll breaks language barriers which have skewed polls for decades, gathering the most accurate and representative data from anywhere in the world, all at a fraction of the cost. In summary, OpenPoll is the future of unbiased market research and polling.

Cheaper
Phone and exit polling is very expensive. Finding the right demographic and users to respond is very time-consuming and expensive. OpenPoll cuts out the middleman and goes directly to respondents creating a much more cost effective platform for politicians, researchers, and corporations.

Inclusive
The OpenPoll platform is inclusive to people who have previously been disenfranchised in polls in surveys. With the ability to instantly translate into languages and connect with members of all socioeconomic groups, OpenPoll provides more representative data and gives everyone a fair voice.

Unbiased
Polling today is significantly biased, with both selection and response biases. Polling outside of a Target versus a Walmart? Selection Bias. Do you have a male asking questions instead of a female? Response Bias. By removing the human element and polling anonymously, we eliminate polling biases.

Encrypted
Corporations have the option to encrypt their data through the system. No one has access to private data, not even OpenPoll. All data is decentralized and stored on our blockchain, with the industry standard encryption capabilities. We offer the ability to release your data publicly at any time, and keep it verifiable.

Zip-Code Accuracy
Target and analyze down to a zip code. We support polls at all scales, from local communities to entire nations. Analyze how responses differ across different communities and cities with no additional cost. Polling costs scale to size, starting at $10.00. Local polling has never before been this easy or affordable.

Decentralized
Rather than processing by a single organization, polls and surveys are completely decentralized and verifiable. We show the source of our polls, so you can verify the responses for yourself. OpenPoll can expand into developing countries without government interference.

Some businesses are led to believe — typically by smooth-talking vendors — that they can reap the rewards of a hosted VoIP phone system for a fraction of the cost, merely by purchasing a cheap in-house PBX phone system and adding (relatively) inexpensive SIP lines.

However, as we’ve discussed previously this configuration doesn’t add up to a legitimate, feature-rich and enterprise-grade hosted VoIP phone system. Instead, it leads to endless configuration obstacles, greater business continuity risk, severely limited feature options and integrations, and one other problem that never goes away: an excessive burden on in-house IT teams.

Here’s why: vendors who sell cheap in-house PBX systems gloss over the fact that it’s NOT a “plug and play” experience. Why do they withhold this critical information? It’s simple: if businesses realized what was in store for their IT team, they would definitely purchase a legitimate hosted VoIP phone system from the beginning vs. try to cobble together a system McGuyever-style.

For example, here is what IT teams are responsible for with an in-house PBX+SIP Trunking:

All end user training (this burden alone is enough to cause some IT professionals to quit!).

Integrations with other systems in the environment (e.g. CRM, billing, project management, etc.).

All system updates and software patches, including those that block malware, viruses and other cyber threats from infecting end points and networks.

Monitoring and maintaining all system operations, including call and session management, voice quality management, feature activation and configuration, and so on.

Not only is this extremely time consuming, but most in-house IT professionals are not (and never claimed to be!) telecommunications experts. As such, they face a massive learning curve, and the need to keep their knowledge up-to-date with the latest advancements.

And of course, businesses that liberate their IT teams from this huge burden must purchase an expensive maintenance agreement —- one that offsets the savings they expected to realize in the first place.

Fortunately, the way to keep IT teams from waving the white flag of surrender, and the way for businesses to affordably reap the advantages of VoIP are the same: go with a hosted VoIP phone system from day one. All user training, technical support, maintenance and upgrades are handled by the off-site VoIP Solutions Provider, right down to the last detail.

The bottom line? There are many smart ways for businesses to save money and “get more for less.” However, in-house PBX+SIP Trunking isn’t one of them — because the burden on IT teams isn’t just enormous, but in many cases, it’s unbearable.

To learn more about the benefits of an advanced, cost-effective and feature-rich hosted VoIP phone system — one that your IT teams will love just as much as your impressed customers — contact the DigitalPhone.io team today. Your consultation with us is free.